21 ms·

News Feed FYI: Addressing Hoaxes and Fake News

84 points by envy2 10y ago

tjr 10y ago
Once a story is flagged, it can’t be made into an ad and promoted, either. After a single flag from a single user?
- saurik 10y ago
  > We’ll use the reports from our community, along with other signals, to send stories to these organizations. If the fact checking organizations identify a story as fake, it will get flagged as disputed and there will be a link to the corresponding article explaining why. Stories that have been disputed may also appear lower in News Feed. It will still be possible to share these stories, but you will see a warning that the story has been disputed as you share. Once a story is flagged, it can’t be made into an ad and promoted, either. So, "flagged" means "determined to be fake by a fact checking organization contracted by Facebook that disputes the article".
  - tjr 10y ago
    Yep, just caught that myself. Sorry, it was two large screenshots up and I missed it. :-) Thanks!
gfodor 10y ago
ok, so now the obvious question becomes, who fact checks the fact checkers? i don't blame facebook, but the people that have been asking for this i guess are about to get what they deserve: more consolidation of the power of persuasion of the masses into the hands of facebook. want to instantly discredit a story? just UPDATE stories SET disputed = t WHERE ID = ?
- basch 10y ago
  Why cant facebook just go after blogspam clickbait in general? If a story is a copy of a copy, have the algorithm favor the original instead of the blogspam. If a local news agency copies an AP/Reuters story word for word, have the software suggest replacing the replica with the original. Treat local news duplicates the same as any wordpress+adsense blog. If journalists are adding commentary thats a different story (albeit most commentary is a needless act of faux value addition anyway) but mashable et all are just embedding ingur/youtube content with a catchy headline and the letters h/t appended to the end. This is a continuation of what ebaumsworld did since foreverago. Deaggregate the aggregating middlemen. Ripping the embed out of the blogspam, and turning it into a direct link, is trivial. If the only content on a page is a youtube video covered in a hundred ads, just return me the youtube video. Flag websites as blogspam, and more agressivly return just the content they "stole." Make it hard to get off that shitlist. Id rather facebook make a little money deconstructing the web, than whomever spun up wordpress and paid for a bad theme being rewarded for polluting it. Facebook has an opportunity to add through reduction; to add value by finding signal in noise, leaving noise on the cutting room floor. Deduplication should be something incredibly easy to do algorithmically, compared to fact checking. (Hell facebook is already half way there with trending, anthough it too often lumps semi-unrelated events.) Google News and Techmeme do a great job of it. Techmeme eloquently spells out the solution http://news.techmeme.com/111031/techmeme-revealed http://news.techmeme.com/111031/techmeme-revealed Too many different ideas are getting conflated here. Clean up the spam/dupe mess FIRST, and sifting the sensationalized salon/dailycaller hyperbole from the blatant false news becomes easier (because we then arent are drowning in nearly identical but different copies of articles.)
  - itsdrewmiller 10y ago
    Maybe follow the link and evaluate the ad:content ratio or just the raw number of different ad services on the page. Seems like the collateral damage to such an approach would largely improve the overall web experience.
    - basch 10y ago
      I do think it important to consolidate duplicates of stories, and credit the original copy. Maybe a feature (that users can disable if it fails) that automatically finds the source and replaces the post with the original. Maybe two versions of the newsfeed, the default "sterilized" and a hidden but accessible "raw"
    - gm-conspiracy 10y ago
      If the ads load quickly, from few domains, and work well in mobile, you can assume it is not a legit news site.
  - wmf 10y ago
    I hate blogspam, but Facebook has to be seen to be taking direct action against fake news right now. They can't afford to take detours to fix other problems first.
    - basch 10y ago
      they are one in the same problem http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?n=1174 http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?n=1174 quite honestly, "mostly fake but slightly rooted in truth blogspam" is 10000x the problem actual straight fake stories are. vitamins, detox, antioxidants, etc, etc, are a much larger pool of fake news than fabricated propaganda. people are making up outrageous stories for ad revenue, not to win elections. state sponsored narratives are unlikely to get flagged by these types of measures because they will be published by credible sources. I doubt NYT will start failing snopes tests. I doubt every SPLC post will get flagged for being out of context or unverified.
  - dabockster 10y ago
- pg314 10y ago
  > just UPDATE stories SET disputed = t WHERE ID = ? It's not that easy. They need provide a link with an explanation why a certain story is disputed. It's true that Facebook has a lot of power. But that was already the case before this update: they could manipulate what stories a user saw, which could be used to influence a large part of their user base. I don't see this as adding that much power. It's also easier to check this mechanism than feed manipulation.
- reilly3000 10y ago
  I think you misunderstand the format of a fact check. It's a distinct piece of content that has its own schema.org markup. It should include only editorial analysis and not opinion. It features reference sources and encourages readers to visit them. It is in its ideal form pure objective journalism. Sites adorn themselves with cute logos about the veracity of the claim but really they should be serving a compilation of facts. If they fail to do so regularly Facebook's credibility is on the line so they will be ensuring they only link to quality sources. They couldn't just batch discredit a topic because they need something to link to.
- floatrock 10y ago
  > who fact checks the fact checkers? Who polices the police? Who governs the government? Who grants authority to the authorities? In western democracies, ideally the answer is all the same: the people. Ideally, once a power broker starts to lose credibility, they start to lose their power. And that's really what this is about. Facebook has lost credibility given the ease these new social technologies have been co-opted into propaganda tools. Sure, on one level they might want to discredit stories, but I think the far more likely scenario is Facebook as a platform for eyeballs has been discredited, and fewer people taking it seriously hurts the stock price. Even as a developer (and potential employee lead), I've more viciously ignored the quarterly facebook recruiter cold-call inbox spam because I frankly don't want to participate in what's become a propaganda mill this election season... I use react and recommend the technology all the time, I have friends who do great work at facebook, and most importantly, I actively use it every day... I just personally want to contribute my efforts elsewhere (after all, cigarette smokers smoke cigarettes every day too). At the end of the day, the credibility of the fact checkers comes from community consensus on the legitimacy of fact checkers. The problem is that micro-targeting groups while maximizing eyeball engagement has connected these groups more closely while breaking community consensus. Without community consensus, fact checkers have no credibility (and neither will Facebook the eyeball platform). In other words, the paradox is we're more social yet more isolated at the same time. I appreciate this fact checker gesture, but at the end of the day, facebook's real credibility problem is they need to align their profits with community and community consensus, not being individually social.
  - floatrock 10y ago
    As a followup thought, > facebook's real credibility problem is they need to align their profits with community consensus and being community-social, not being individually social. The best litmus test for this is going to be whether everyone will see the same "disputed by 3rd parties" warning, or whether that warning will be micro-targeted to individual echochambers like everything else is. If my echochamber will show a warning next to a breitbart piece but my conservative uncle won't see it because his echochamber disagrees with the fact checking, that's going to be a huge red flag that facebook is only continuing the individually-social behavior that created this credibility problem in the first place.
lhnz 10y ago
I wonder if this will be as sketchy as politifact? I hope it won't be, but I reckon it might be. (What I mean is: extremely uncharitable readings of things that they don't like, but overly charitable readings of anything that they like.)
- NoGravitas 10y ago
  I would expect that behaviour from any political news fact checker, humans being what they are.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- throwanem 10y ago
  Politifact is one of the organizations on the approved list [1], and the closest thing I can find on that list to an organization anyone not on the left is likely to regard as politically neutral is the Associated Press. So I'm not really seeing what Facebook expects this to help. [1] http://www.poynter.org/fact-checkers-code-of-principles/ http://www.poynter.org/fact-checkers-code-of-principles/
  - pg314 10y ago
    Maybe stop the spread of nonsense like 'pope endorses Trump' or pizzagate?
    - basch 10y ago
      would these measures end up blocking something like a modest proposal
      - _dark_matter_ 10y ago
        A Modest Proposal is not, and never was, "News". It is opinion.
        10y ago
gedy 10y ago
How about a setting to block all link shares if this is supposedly such a huge threat?
nostromo 10y ago
The timing of this makes it seem politically motivated. I've seen plenty of fake news on my liberal feed. Things like 9/11 conspiracy theories, anti-vaccination stories, stories about the dangers of genetically modified foods, etc.
- pavanky 10y ago
  Does it matter what the motivations are if they are using the same criteria for filtering all kinds of fake news?
  - jackcosgrove 10y ago
    Humans in the loop means the criteria will not be the same.
    - pavanky 10y ago
      What is the alternative? Right now the alternative is to add another layer of bias in between.
      - jackcosgrove 10y ago
        The alternative is to allow free and open communication that is unmediated, unannotated, and unmoderated by any authority, and to allow information consumers to decide what they should and should not read and believe themselves. It's the difference between the web and a walled garden. I get that FB is interested in mediating, annotating, and moderating content, since they are a walled garden. That's why I choose not to use FB, which is my right as a web user.
        morgante 10y ago
        Since you're not a Facebook user, why do you care? They have the right to do whatever they damn well please on their website. This isn't breaking the "open internet." Nothing about the design of the internet allows you to dictate how people run their websites.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
tomquin 10y ago
Expecting corporate media to sanitize itself might be a new proof of Einstein's rule of insanity. The only short term solution to rampant widespread disinformation in the MSM is a healthy and sustained level of cynicism. Its time the media was truly disrupted and dispatched to the bottom of the see.
halpiamaquark 10y ago
The kosher fact checkers list includes the biased and opinion-based Politifact and Snopes.
- morgante 10y ago
  Let me guess: any source which doesn't corroborate your worldview is biased.
  - halpiamaquark 10y ago
    Politifact and Snopes push their opinionated worldview as though it is objectively true and morally righteous.
    - st3v3r 10y ago
      Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
    - trashtoss 10y ago
      > Your belief is that Politifact and Snopes push their opinionated worldview as though it is objectively true and morally righteous. Wouldn't want to be guilty of the same sin, right?
      - halpiamaquark 10y ago
        I do not put myself out there as a disinterested arbiter of fact. Facebook isn't going to be appending my critical analysis to alleged fake news stores.
        trashtoss 10y ago
        Given this: > I do not put myself out there as a disinterested arbiter of fact. ...all I can say to this: > Facebook isn't going to be appending my critical analysis to alleged fake news stores. ...is quelle surprise. Were you expecting some other outcome?
danso 10y ago
> We’ve found that a lot of fake news is financially motivated. Spammers make money by masquerading as well-known news organizations, and posting hoaxes that get people to visit to their sites, which are often mostly ads. So we’re doing several things to reduce the financial incentives. On the buying side we’ve eliminated the ability to spoof domains, which will reduce the prevalence of sites that pretend to be real publications. What do they mean "the ability to spoof domains"? Was that a technical issue? Or do they mean they're blacklisting sites such as http://abcnews.com.co/ http://abcnews.com.co/, progenitor of such hoaxes as El Chapo escaping from prison (again) [0] Given how easy it is to fool people with ambiguous characters/names, blacklisting URLs that aren't all ASCII might be a good precaution too. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABCnews.com.co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABCnews.com.co
- tedunangst 10y ago
  https://medium.com/@hunchly/bait-and-switch-the-failure-of-facebook-advertising-an-osint-investigation-37d693b2a858 https://medium.com/@hunchly/bait-and-switch-the-failure-of-f...
- sigmar 10y ago
  I saw people share fake articles from that site on facebook. It is a big problem because non-technical people do not know that abcnews.com.co is a subdomain of com.co, not a subdomain of abcnews.com.
  - ghostly_s 10y ago
    Isn't .com.co a second-level domain for Colombia?
  - dabockster 10y ago
    > non-technical people do not know that abcnews.com.co is a subdomain of com.co, not a subdomain of abcnews.com This is a huge issue. A lot of HN always seems to forget that there are a lot of users out there who are not as gifted with technology as we are. (Case in point, my mother just learned what HTTPS meant last week through an NBC Nightly News segment.) Unfortunately, it seems to be largely generational in nature.
intrasight 10y ago
I just disable the FB news feed
seanca 10y ago
Facebook seems to be stumbling down the same page that Twitter did here in terms of attempting to regulate some content, by means that they themselves determines to be un-biased and in the best interests of users... which hasn't quite worked out so well for Twitter. If everything is fine and unmoderated, there is no bias. If some things are flagged, not allowed, etc, I don't care how much a 3rd party is trusted. It's still humans picking and choosing one piece of content over another, and there are inherent biases involved there.
- mozumder 10y ago
  Unmoderation = infinite spam.
  - jwtadvice 10y ago
    Spam platform = infinite spam. Facebook makes its money from spam, as do the news. Because they've lost credibility there's this new huge reach to label things as condoned or not. That's not going to solve the ultimate problem, which is that the information industry has become a platform where the highest spam bidder wins dissemination on the platform, rather than what spam is shared by people. This is just one more step in the centralization of control of social media. There's still going to be plenty of spam, it just has to pay the gatekeeper (Facebook) or otherwise be on its good side.
    - seanca 10y ago
      Exactly. What someone else might call spam, Facebook might call "great news." If having free speech produces "infinite spam", then that's a byproduct worth the benefits of not being limited on what ideas are ok to say and what ideas are not.
r2dnb 10y ago
Remember : - It all started with Facebook being accused of manipulating the timeline to remove conservative stories during the campaign - At the time, their PR was along the lines of : we will fire the staff and replace it with an "objective" algorithm - Shortly before the end of the campaign, the Fake News narrative started to be tested under various forms ("conspiracy theories are going mainstream", "damaging rumors" etc...) - Post election the Fake News narrative started to be really pushed by politics - At the same time, FB started to announce actions to fight the so called "Fake News Problem". - And these day, hearing FB and mainstream media, the rethoric is as shameless as "We need to clean the news". Having been caught doing some very troubling things, FB answer is to double down with what would be called censorship if it was being done in China. Shutting down opinions, based on the opinions expressed can remind certain patterns of a not so old history. I find it shocking that people accept this development so quietly. Everybody seems to be ok with that. It seems like citizens are no longer awake and fighting for the bill of rights, seriously folks how can something like this possibly happen in this country ? Are you realizing what is happening here ? In 2016, the average citizen thinks he is a good citizen and is all proud by being "politically correct" for a number of small things (often ridiculous and preventing him from maturing his own opinions) but everybody is comfortable with movements such as "Cleaning the news" being organized in plain sight. That's how you know something is fucked up. This is a shame.
- jeromegv 10y ago
  Isn't that a problem when a news that says that the Pope supports Donald Trump gets over 1 millions shares? This isn't opinion, this is pure fabrication.
  - sigmar 10y ago
    A guy fired a gun in a pizza place, this is facebook's response. That guy arguing this is an affront to the bill of rights, seems to have never read the bill of rights.
  - r2dnb 10y ago
    The article could go on and make the case that the actions of the Pope are not aligned with his rethoric which shows that nothing is as black and white as what you suggest.
losteverything 10y ago
I kind of wish they took no action. It is inevitable fb will be the "war of the worlds" or National Enquirer wrt "news" doing nothing gets them there quicker. Fb is unparalled in sharing photos and personal information to friend. News? Not.
alva 10y ago
Still think this is a horrible move for a variety of reasons but I have one big question. Where can I access the reasons and organisation who have disputed the link? Without this information, this is even more terrible than I had previously thought it would be. If we cannot see who disputed the link and why, this is massive potential for abuse. edit: Apparently the reason is given in a link
- morgante 10y ago
  > If the fact checking organizations identify a story as fake, it will get flagged as disputed and there will be a link to the corresponding article explaining why. You will be able to click through to read the full analysis of why a story is false.
  - alva 10y ago
    Ah bugger my bad, missed that. I hope the analysis also identifies the organisation/s who provided it.
    - morgante 10y ago
      Presumably it'll be a link to the article on that organization's website.
      - alva 10y ago
        I really hope that each disputed link is given a comprehensive response and not a cookie cutter response. I think a template response is probably the most likely outcome, especially considering the number of articles that are going to be checked by these organisations. Do they really have the resources available to give a bespoke response? I think there is danger if these organisations are allowed to submit template responses.
jwtadvice 10y ago
The ultimate issue here is that these information providers need to train their users to be gullible, as this is their business and partnership model. These platforms only function because advertisements and political messaging have to be seen, and are seen, as credible and native to the content being traded by the people using the platform. Users are trained to uncritically believe the things that show up on their feed, because if they were trained to be skeptical they would the platform would go bankrupt. Similarly, news media requires readers to have full faith - almost ideological allegiance - in what they are reporting, while at the same time they need an uncritical readership so that they can promote political and consumer advertisements, sponsored and 'earned' content promotion and opinion pieces as though they were fact. The entire industry functions on the basis of gullible and uncritical readership, media allegiance and sponsored content. The industry has fallen to extremely low credibility ratings, and a series of nonsense and unpredictive and obvious reporting out of the 'most credible' parts of the industry have left a vacuum whereby readers do not know what to believe, and so accept whatever is most convenient and most readily available. The solution is to create a credible news media industry, with no sponsored or partner content, no PR, no government propaganda, and where the readers (and skimmers) are the customers who pay for the information. The industry should compete to provide context and reliable information, and readership should be encouraged to be skeptical of the information presented to them at all times. Maintaining the current mispractice of the poorly functioning industry and adding protectionist measures, gatekeeping and sponsored fact-checkers is not going to solve the problem. "I'll tell them what to think" is not a solution to "these people are gullible."
- carrier_lost 10y ago
  "uncritical readership" I'm guessing you've never worked for a news organization.
  - jwtadvice 10y ago
    I freelanced. To be clear by 'uncritical' I mean 'gullible' - as in 'uncritical thinking'.
throw2016 10y ago
Nothing can help an ignorant or illiterate population. If that is your premise the next logical step is censorship and this is censorship. How does the arrogant assumption of ignorant readers so weak willed they can be 'led ashtray' by 'fake news' even take hold? Do people really believe that 'other people' believe everything they read? The ridiculous idea that people are naive is a fabricated construction designed to empower some while 'infantalising' the rest and is inherently anti-democratic. Ordinary scepticism and not believing everything you read or hear is a basic human skill. This fake news scare and blame 'Putin' for everything wrong in the world is so illiterate, juvenile and insulting to basic human intelligence and reflects something dangerously wrong in our media, politics and the tech community.
jscheel 10y ago
The sad thing is, most people who share fake news will just claim that Facebook is now part of the Soros-Clinton conspiracy to support the MSM and hide the truth from the public. I like that they have a specific set of guidelines for determining the veracity of a news story, and I'm sure this will go a long way towards removing the financial incentive, but I'm guessing it won't sway many minds.

84 points by envy2 10y ago

tjr 10y ago

Once a story is flagged, it can’t be made into an ad and promoted, either. After a single flag from a single user?

saurik 10y ago
> We’ll use the reports from our community, along with other signals, to send stories to these organizations. If the fact checking organizations identify a story as fake, it will get flagged as disputed and there will be a link to the corresponding article explaining why. Stories that have been disputed may also appear lower in News Feed. It will still be possible to share these stories, but you will see a warning that the story has been disputed as you share. Once a story is flagged, it can’t be made into an ad and promoted, either. So, "flagged" means "determined to be fake by a fact checking organization contracted by Facebook that disputes the article".
- tjr 10y ago
  Yep, just caught that myself. Sorry, it was two large screenshots up and I missed it. :-) Thanks!

gfodor 10y ago

ok, so now the obvious question becomes, who fact checks the fact checkers? i don't blame facebook, but the people that have been asking for this i guess are about to get what they deserve: more consolidation of the power of persuasion of the masses into the hands of facebook. want to instantly discredit a story? just UPDATE stories SET disputed = t WHERE ID = ?

basch 10y ago
Why cant facebook just go after blogspam clickbait in general? If a story is a copy of a copy, have the algorithm favor the original instead of the blogspam. If a local news agency copies an AP/Reuters story word for word, have the software suggest replacing the replica with the original. Treat local news duplicates the same as any wordpress+adsense blog. If journalists are adding commentary thats a different story (albeit most commentary is a needless act of faux value addition anyway) but mashable et all are just embedding ingur/youtube content with a catchy headline and the letters h/t appended to the end. This is a continuation of what ebaumsworld did since foreverago. Deaggregate the aggregating middlemen. Ripping the embed out of the blogspam, and turning it into a direct link, is trivial. If the only content on a page is a youtube video covered in a hundred ads, just return me the youtube video. Flag websites as blogspam, and more agressivly return just the content they "stole." Make it hard to get off that shitlist. Id rather facebook make a little money deconstructing the web, than whomever spun up wordpress and paid for a bad theme being rewarded for polluting it. Facebook has an opportunity to add through reduction; to add value by finding signal in noise, leaving noise on the cutting room floor. Deduplication should be something incredibly easy to do algorithmically, compared to fact checking. (Hell facebook is already half way there with trending, anthough it too often lumps semi-unrelated events.) Google News and Techmeme do a great job of it. Techmeme eloquently spells out the solution http://news.techmeme.com/111031/techmeme-revealed http://news.techmeme.com/111031/techmeme-revealed Too many different ideas are getting conflated here. Clean up the spam/dupe mess FIRST, and sifting the sensationalized salon/dailycaller hyperbole from the blatant false news becomes easier (because we then arent are drowning in nearly identical but different copies of articles.)
- itsdrewmiller 10y ago
  Maybe follow the link and evaluate the ad:content ratio or just the raw number of different ad services on the page. Seems like the collateral damage to such an approach would largely improve the overall web experience.
  - basch 10y ago
    I do think it important to consolidate duplicates of stories, and credit the original copy. Maybe a feature (that users can disable if it fails) that automatically finds the source and replaces the post with the original. Maybe two versions of the newsfeed, the default "sterilized" and a hidden but accessible "raw"
  - gm-conspiracy 10y ago
    If the ads load quickly, from few domains, and work well in mobile, you can assume it is not a legit news site.
- wmf 10y ago
  I hate blogspam, but Facebook has to be seen to be taking direct action against fake news right now. They can't afford to take detours to fix other problems first.
  - basch 10y ago
    they are one in the same problem http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?n=1174 http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?n=1174 quite honestly, "mostly fake but slightly rooted in truth blogspam" is 10000x the problem actual straight fake stories are. vitamins, detox, antioxidants, etc, etc, are a much larger pool of fake news than fabricated propaganda. people are making up outrageous stories for ad revenue, not to win elections. state sponsored narratives are unlikely to get flagged by these types of measures because they will be published by credible sources. I doubt NYT will start failing snopes tests. I doubt every SPLC post will get flagged for being out of context or unverified.
- dabockster 10y ago
pg314 10y ago
> just UPDATE stories SET disputed = t WHERE ID = ? It's not that easy. They need provide a link with an explanation why a certain story is disputed. It's true that Facebook has a lot of power. But that was already the case before this update: they could manipulate what stories a user saw, which could be used to influence a large part of their user base. I don't see this as adding that much power. It's also easier to check this mechanism than feed manipulation.
reilly3000 10y ago
I think you misunderstand the format of a fact check. It's a distinct piece of content that has its own schema.org markup. It should include only editorial analysis and not opinion. It features reference sources and encourages readers to visit them. It is in its ideal form pure objective journalism. Sites adorn themselves with cute logos about the veracity of the claim but really they should be serving a compilation of facts. If they fail to do so regularly Facebook's credibility is on the line so they will be ensuring they only link to quality sources. They couldn't just batch discredit a topic because they need something to link to.
floatrock 10y ago
> who fact checks the fact checkers? Who polices the police? Who governs the government? Who grants authority to the authorities? In western democracies, ideally the answer is all the same: the people. Ideally, once a power broker starts to lose credibility, they start to lose their power. And that's really what this is about. Facebook has lost credibility given the ease these new social technologies have been co-opted into propaganda tools. Sure, on one level they might want to discredit stories, but I think the far more likely scenario is Facebook as a platform for eyeballs has been discredited, and fewer people taking it seriously hurts the stock price. Even as a developer (and potential employee lead), I've more viciously ignored the quarterly facebook recruiter cold-call inbox spam because I frankly don't want to participate in what's become a propaganda mill this election season... I use react and recommend the technology all the time, I have friends who do great work at facebook, and most importantly, I actively use it every day... I just personally want to contribute my efforts elsewhere (after all, cigarette smokers smoke cigarettes every day too). At the end of the day, the credibility of the fact checkers comes from community consensus on the legitimacy of fact checkers. The problem is that micro-targeting groups while maximizing eyeball engagement has connected these groups more closely while breaking community consensus. Without community consensus, fact checkers have no credibility (and neither will Facebook the eyeball platform). In other words, the paradox is we're more social yet more isolated at the same time. I appreciate this fact checker gesture, but at the end of the day, facebook's real credibility problem is they need to align their profits with community and community consensus, not being individually social.
- floatrock 10y ago
  As a followup thought, > facebook's real credibility problem is they need to align their profits with community consensus and being community-social, not being individually social. The best litmus test for this is going to be whether everyone will see the same "disputed by 3rd parties" warning, or whether that warning will be micro-targeted to individual echochambers like everything else is. If my echochamber will show a warning next to a breitbart piece but my conservative uncle won't see it because his echochamber disagrees with the fact checking, that's going to be a huge red flag that facebook is only continuing the individually-social behavior that created this credibility problem in the first place.

lhnz 10y ago

I wonder if this will be as sketchy as politifact? I hope it won't be, but I reckon it might be. (What I mean is: extremely uncharitable readings of things that they don't like, but overly charitable readings of anything that they like.)

NoGravitas 10y ago
I would expect that behaviour from any political news fact checker, humans being what they are.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
throwanem 10y ago
Politifact is one of the organizations on the approved list [1], and the closest thing I can find on that list to an organization anyone not on the left is likely to regard as politically neutral is the Associated Press. So I'm not really seeing what Facebook expects this to help. [1] http://www.poynter.org/fact-checkers-code-of-principles/ http://www.poynter.org/fact-checkers-code-of-principles/
- pg314 10y ago
  Maybe stop the spread of nonsense like 'pope endorses Trump' or pizzagate?
  - basch 10y ago
    would these measures end up blocking something like a modest proposal
    - _dark_matter_ 10y ago
      A Modest Proposal is not, and never was, "News". It is opinion.
      - 10y ago

gedy 10y ago

How about a setting to block all link shares if this is supposedly such a huge threat?

nostromo 10y ago

The timing of this makes it seem politically motivated. I've seen plenty of fake news on my liberal feed. Things like 9/11 conspiracy theories, anti-vaccination stories, stories about the dangers of genetically modified foods, etc.

pavanky 10y ago
Does it matter what the motivations are if they are using the same criteria for filtering all kinds of fake news?
- jackcosgrove 10y ago
  Humans in the loop means the criteria will not be the same.
  - pavanky 10y ago
    What is the alternative? Right now the alternative is to add another layer of bias in between.
    - jackcosgrove 10y ago
      The alternative is to allow free and open communication that is unmediated, unannotated, and unmoderated by any authority, and to allow information consumers to decide what they should and should not read and believe themselves. It's the difference between the web and a walled garden. I get that FB is interested in mediating, annotating, and moderating content, since they are a walled garden. That's why I choose not to use FB, which is my right as a web user.
      - morgante 10y ago
        Since you're not a Facebook user, why do you care? They have the right to do whatever they damn well please on their website. This isn't breaking the "open internet." Nothing about the design of the internet allows you to dictate how people run their websites.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

tomquin 10y ago

Expecting corporate media to sanitize itself might be a new proof of Einstein's rule of insanity. The only short term solution to rampant widespread disinformation in the MSM is a healthy and sustained level of cynicism. Its time the media was truly disrupted and dispatched to the bottom of the see.

halpiamaquark 10y ago

The kosher fact checkers list includes the biased and opinion-based Politifact and Snopes.

morgante 10y ago
Let me guess: any source which doesn't corroborate your worldview is biased.
- halpiamaquark 10y ago
  Politifact and Snopes push their opinionated worldview as though it is objectively true and morally righteous.
  - st3v3r 10y ago
    Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
  - trashtoss 10y ago
    > Your belief is that Politifact and Snopes push their opinionated worldview as though it is objectively true and morally righteous. Wouldn't want to be guilty of the same sin, right?
    - halpiamaquark 10y ago
      I do not put myself out there as a disinterested arbiter of fact. Facebook isn't going to be appending my critical analysis to alleged fake news stores.
      - trashtoss 10y ago
        Given this: > I do not put myself out there as a disinterested arbiter of fact. ...all I can say to this: > Facebook isn't going to be appending my critical analysis to alleged fake news stores. ...is quelle surprise. Were you expecting some other outcome?

danso 10y ago

> We’ve found that a lot of fake news is financially motivated. Spammers make money by masquerading as well-known news organizations, and posting hoaxes that get people to visit to their sites, which are often mostly ads. So we’re doing several things to reduce the financial incentives. On the buying side we’ve eliminated the ability to spoof domains, which will reduce the prevalence of sites that pretend to be real publications. What do they mean "the ability to spoof domains"? Was that a technical issue? Or do they mean they're blacklisting sites such as http://abcnews.com.co/ http://abcnews.com.co/, progenitor of such hoaxes as El Chapo escaping from prison (again) [0] Given how easy it is to fool people with ambiguous characters/names, blacklisting URLs that aren't all ASCII might be a good precaution too. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABCnews.com.co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABCnews.com.co

tedunangst 10y ago
https://medium.com/@hunchly/bait-and-switch-the-failure-of-facebook-advertising-an-osint-investigation-37d693b2a858 https://medium.com/@hunchly/bait-and-switch-the-failure-of-f...
sigmar 10y ago
I saw people share fake articles from that site on facebook. It is a big problem because non-technical people do not know that abcnews.com.co is a subdomain of com.co, not a subdomain of abcnews.com.
- ghostly_s 10y ago
  Isn't .com.co a second-level domain for Colombia?
- dabockster 10y ago
  > non-technical people do not know that abcnews.com.co is a subdomain of com.co, not a subdomain of abcnews.com This is a huge issue. A lot of HN always seems to forget that there are a lot of users out there who are not as gifted with technology as we are. (Case in point, my mother just learned what HTTPS meant last week through an NBC Nightly News segment.) Unfortunately, it seems to be largely generational in nature.

intrasight 10y ago

I just disable the FB news feed

seanca 10y ago

Facebook seems to be stumbling down the same page that Twitter did here in terms of attempting to regulate some content, by means that they themselves determines to be un-biased and in the best interests of users... which hasn't quite worked out so well for Twitter. If everything is fine and unmoderated, there is no bias. If some things are flagged, not allowed, etc, I don't care how much a 3rd party is trusted. It's still humans picking and choosing one piece of content over another, and there are inherent biases involved there.

mozumder 10y ago
Unmoderation = infinite spam.
- jwtadvice 10y ago
  Spam platform = infinite spam. Facebook makes its money from spam, as do the news. Because they've lost credibility there's this new huge reach to label things as condoned or not. That's not going to solve the ultimate problem, which is that the information industry has become a platform where the highest spam bidder wins dissemination on the platform, rather than what spam is shared by people. This is just one more step in the centralization of control of social media. There's still going to be plenty of spam, it just has to pay the gatekeeper (Facebook) or otherwise be on its good side.
  - seanca 10y ago
    Exactly. What someone else might call spam, Facebook might call "great news." If having free speech produces "infinite spam", then that's a byproduct worth the benefits of not being limited on what ideas are ok to say and what ideas are not.

r2dnb 10y ago

Remember : - It all started with Facebook being accused of manipulating the timeline to remove conservative stories during the campaign - At the time, their PR was along the lines of : we will fire the staff and replace it with an "objective" algorithm - Shortly before the end of the campaign, the Fake News narrative started to be tested under various forms ("conspiracy theories are going mainstream", "damaging rumors" etc...) - Post election the Fake News narrative started to be really pushed by politics - At the same time, FB started to announce actions to fight the so called "Fake News Problem". - And these day, hearing FB and mainstream media, the rethoric is as shameless as "We need to clean the news". Having been caught doing some very troubling things, FB answer is to double down with what would be called censorship if it was being done in China. Shutting down opinions, based on the opinions expressed can remind certain patterns of a not so old history. I find it shocking that people accept this development so quietly. Everybody seems to be ok with that. It seems like citizens are no longer awake and fighting for the bill of rights, seriously folks how can something like this possibly happen in this country ? Are you realizing what is happening here ? In 2016, the average citizen thinks he is a good citizen and is all proud by being "politically correct" for a number of small things (often ridiculous and preventing him from maturing his own opinions) but everybody is comfortable with movements such as "Cleaning the news" being organized in plain sight. That's how you know something is fucked up. This is a shame.

jeromegv 10y ago
Isn't that a problem when a news that says that the Pope supports Donald Trump gets over 1 millions shares? This isn't opinion, this is pure fabrication.
- sigmar 10y ago
  A guy fired a gun in a pizza place, this is facebook's response. That guy arguing this is an affront to the bill of rights, seems to have never read the bill of rights.
- r2dnb 10y ago
  The article could go on and make the case that the actions of the Pope are not aligned with his rethoric which shows that nothing is as black and white as what you suggest.

losteverything 10y ago

I kind of wish they took no action. It is inevitable fb will be the "war of the worlds" or National Enquirer wrt "news" doing nothing gets them there quicker. Fb is unparalled in sharing photos and personal information to friend. News? Not.

alva 10y ago

Still think this is a horrible move for a variety of reasons but I have one big question. Where can I access the reasons and organisation who have disputed the link? Without this information, this is even more terrible than I had previously thought it would be. If we cannot see who disputed the link and why, this is massive potential for abuse. edit: Apparently the reason is given in a link

morgante 10y ago
> If the fact checking organizations identify a story as fake, it will get flagged as disputed and there will be a link to the corresponding article explaining why. You will be able to click through to read the full analysis of why a story is false.
- alva 10y ago
  Ah bugger my bad, missed that. I hope the analysis also identifies the organisation/s who provided it.
  - morgante 10y ago
    Presumably it'll be a link to the article on that organization's website.
    - alva 10y ago
      I really hope that each disputed link is given a comprehensive response and not a cookie cutter response. I think a template response is probably the most likely outcome, especially considering the number of articles that are going to be checked by these organisations. Do they really have the resources available to give a bespoke response? I think there is danger if these organisations are allowed to submit template responses.

jwtadvice 10y ago

The ultimate issue here is that these information providers need to train their users to be gullible, as this is their business and partnership model. These platforms only function because advertisements and political messaging have to be seen, and are seen, as credible and native to the content being traded by the people using the platform. Users are trained to uncritically believe the things that show up on their feed, because if they were trained to be skeptical they would the platform would go bankrupt. Similarly, news media requires readers to have full faith - almost ideological allegiance - in what they are reporting, while at the same time they need an uncritical readership so that they can promote political and consumer advertisements, sponsored and 'earned' content promotion and opinion pieces as though they were fact. The entire industry functions on the basis of gullible and uncritical readership, media allegiance and sponsored content. The industry has fallen to extremely low credibility ratings, and a series of nonsense and unpredictive and obvious reporting out of the 'most credible' parts of the industry have left a vacuum whereby readers do not know what to believe, and so accept whatever is most convenient and most readily available. The solution is to create a credible news media industry, with no sponsored or partner content, no PR, no government propaganda, and where the readers (and skimmers) are the customers who pay for the information. The industry should compete to provide context and reliable information, and readership should be encouraged to be skeptical of the information presented to them at all times. Maintaining the current mispractice of the poorly functioning industry and adding protectionist measures, gatekeeping and sponsored fact-checkers is not going to solve the problem. "I'll tell them what to think" is not a solution to "these people are gullible."

carrier_lost 10y ago
"uncritical readership" I'm guessing you've never worked for a news organization.
- jwtadvice 10y ago
  I freelanced. To be clear by 'uncritical' I mean 'gullible' - as in 'uncritical thinking'.

throw2016 10y ago

Nothing can help an ignorant or illiterate population. If that is your premise the next logical step is censorship and this is censorship. How does the arrogant assumption of ignorant readers so weak willed they can be 'led ashtray' by 'fake news' even take hold? Do people really believe that 'other people' believe everything they read? The ridiculous idea that people are naive is a fabricated construction designed to empower some while 'infantalising' the rest and is inherently anti-democratic. Ordinary scepticism and not believing everything you read or hear is a basic human skill. This fake news scare and blame 'Putin' for everything wrong in the world is so illiterate, juvenile and insulting to basic human intelligence and reflects something dangerously wrong in our media, politics and the tech community.

jscheel 10y ago

The sad thing is, most people who share fake news will just claim that Facebook is now part of the Soros-Clinton conspiracy to support the MSM and hide the truth from the public. I like that they have a specific set of guidelines for determining the veracity of a news story, and I'm sure this will go a long way towards removing the financial incentive, but I'm guessing it won't sway many minds.